Welcome to Charming, where swirling petticoats, the language of flowers, and old-fashioned duels are only the beginning of what is lying underneath…
After a magical attempt on her life in 1877, Queen Victoria launched a crusade against magic that, while tidied up by the Ministry of Magic, saw the Wizarding community exiled to Hogsmeade, previously little more than a crossroad near the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In the years that have passed since, Hogsmeade has suffered plagues, fires, and Victorian hypocrisy but is still standing firm.
Thethe year is now 1896. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.
Complete five threads of five posts or more where your character experiences bad luck, such as stepping in a chamberpot, losing the rings for a wedding, etc...
Did You Know?
One of the cheapest homeless shelters in Victorian London charged four pennies to sleep in a coffin. Which was... still better than sleeping upright against a rope? — Jordan / Lynn
If he was being completely honest, the situation didn't look good, but Sylvano was not in the habit of being completely honest about anything. No reason to start now.
— Sylvano Capobiancoinyou & me & the war of the endtimes
You've never done me wrong
Except for that one time
That we don't talk about
Because it doesn't matter anymore
Angie was selling the flat, which meant Cash had to get the stuff he'd stashed here out of it, which was a whole — emotional Gordian knot. He didn't want to make things more difficult for her. He didn't want to go to the flat alone. Eventually Cash settled on going with Theo, on an early evening after they both left work but when Angie was still stuck at the Ministry. He'd cut it close — she needed to be out by the time her brother came home on Friday — but he hadn't wanted to do this at all. And it felt strange, bringing Theo here, even though they both knew Angie — partially because the flat felt like Cash's and Angie's space, and partially because of Eli.
He met Theo in the building's staircase, stayed quiet on the way up, and used his keys to unlock the door, pushing when it stuck in the familiar spaces. Cash cleared his throat and set his keys down on her table — (was she going to move that, or sell it to the new owners? It wasn't a very good table, but Cash felt hollow at the thought of abandoning it.)
"It'll mostly be boring, I think," Cash said, tone apologetic. "Cheap alcohol and penny dreadfuls I've already read."
But he'd still wanted to do it himself, rather than relying on Angie for it.
“You may be overestimating the excitement of my average evenings,” Theo said dryly, shooting Cash an offhand shrug and a smile he hoped was reassuring. Relaxed.
Anything to disguise the strange flicker of nervousness in his gut. Maybe it was closer to awkwardness than to nerves, just a sneaking suspicion that he was trespassing on something, shouldn’t be here. He had been here before, but not with Cash – so it already felt different. (Cash seemed different already, quiet.)
But that was alright. “Where do you want to start?” he murmured. But they didn’t even need to talk while Cash sorted through his stuff, if he preferred not to – if Theo’s task here was just to be here, some company in the space, well, that wasn’t much to ask. He could do that. (And cheap alcohol was still alcohol.)
Cash considered Theo's question for a beat. His eyes flicked towards the door to one of the bedrooms, not Angie's, the other one — by rights, none of Cash's things should be in there, because Angie had had a roommate or two in the intervening years, but. He would have to look inside, to be sure.
He looked back at Theo, swallowed, and stepped into the kitchen. "The easy part," Cash said. He leaned up to open the cabinet, revealing bottles of liquor, some partially drank, some unopened. He brought down a bottle of bourbon that was already two-thirds empty. There wouldn't be any use in bringing that home.
He turned towards Theo. "Can you grab some glasses? They're — the cabinet two to the right," Cash said.
The easy part. “I’ll cheers to that,” Theo said with a nod, and reached down the glasses – the cabinet was already half-empty, maybe already partially packed away. He set two remaining glasses on the counter, glancing at the bottle’s label. Cash and Angie both drank the same particular kind of bourbon, a little different than the average Scotch or firewhiskey. Shared tastes.
“It must feel weird,” he ventured more seriously, to fill the silence while Cash poured. Having to leave a place behind; knowing you were somewhere for perhaps the last time.
Theo wasn't prying, probably because he was not much of a pryer, but he was asking questions, and Cash knew that he probably ought to give him a little bit more. He finished pouring the bourbon, left the cap off, and took a sip before replying. He leaned against the counter. "It is weird," he admitted, "I feel like I've been — a lot of different versions of myself, here."
“Yeah,” Theo said, with a small grimace in sympathy; he was sure that it was true, and not sure that Cash actually wanted to talk about it. “Sorry you have to do this.”Sorry you have to say goodbye to this place, he might have said, but he almost didn’t want to let Cash get too deep in the past. And his memories must exist in more than the walls of this flat, anyway.
He tasted the bourbon (hopefully it would get better by degrees as he drank it), gave it another beat, and then picked up the bottle for them, gently nudging Cash’s shoulder. “Let’s bring this with us,” he said, because maybe it was better to be decisive, and help him rip the bandage off before the trepidation got too much? And it felt like Cash might need the drink to get him through it, facing – whatever versions of himself had existed here through the years.
Theo was trying not to think about it too hard, as he wandered questioningly towards the room Cash had been glancing at before.
The nudge to his shoulder was welcome; Theo's approach of Eli's bedroom was less so. There was cognitive dissonance in his brain as he thought of Theo in that bedroom, and never mind that Angie'd had flatmates off and on in the past few years. The room would always be Eli's, and Cash half felt that they would open the door and find the boy alive behind it.
"All right," he said, following Theo's lead towards it. He placed a hand on the doorknob. "I don't even know that I have anything in here, but — it was his room."
He opened the door to the unfurnished bedroom; all that immediately remained in it was an empty nightstand, and a mattress and bed frame. There were no bedclothes on the mattress. Light shone through the window. Cash took another sip of bourbon.
“Oh.” It was Theo’s turn to swallow, half regretting forcing the motion of Cash opening the door. He knew who his meant, even if there seemed to be no particular signs of the room having been lived in now, by Eli or by anyone. It was stripped down, mundane and unhaunted in the lingering spring daylight.
Different if there were memories still inhabiting it, or things stowed away that Cash was worried or hoping he might find. Theo leant against the doorjamb on the threshold of the room, suddenly more hesitant about going in. He hung on to his glass of bourbon and the bottle tucked under his other arm, and let his gaze slide back to Cash to pass him a smile, trying to keep things light. “I can wait outside, you know, if you want.” He could sit in the kitchen and flip through one of those penny dreadfuls until Cash was finished, if he needed to be alone.
"No," Cash said, swiftly, "Stay." It was weird to have Theo in this room, past and present intersecting in a way he had known would happen and had not been prepared for, but it would be weirder still to stand in this room and pretend that Theo was not here.
He pulled the drawers of the wardrobe open, full of trepidation, but — nothing. They were just as emptied-out as the bed was, and the only ghosts here were the ones he had brought with him. "There's nothing here."
And why was he saddened, why was his voice coming out wistful, when there was nothing here?
He didn’t know if it was better or worse that Cash wanted him to stay. Gratifying, maybe – but maybe Theo had half been asking for himself, to get away from the itching feeling under his skin.
He left Cash to start on the wardrobe and in the meantime set the bourbon bottle and his glass on the bedroom windowsill with a quiet thud, resisting the urge to look directly over. But he heard the words, and exhaled at them, because – selfishly, maybe he had hoped there wouldn’t be anything left of Eli here? He knew this was selfish, knew this was unfair, because he couldn’t miss the terrible disappointment in Cash’s tone.
Hell. Theo sank onto the side of the bare mattress. “Sorry, Cash,” he breathed, as if consoling him made up for the guilt of his own relief. Still, wasn’t it was a long shot for Cash to have found something vital here of Eli, because surely Angie would have discovered it first and moved it out in the intervening years? Unless there was something in the nightstand drawer or under a loose floorboard somewhere – but Eli Swan hadn’t known he was going to die, so it was unlikely he had left something for him intentionally, that there would be anything meaningful to find.
But who was he to stop Cash from looking, however desperate it was?
Cash watched Theo settle onto the bare mattress and, after a beat, sat down next to him. He leaned against Theo, slow, letting the other man's warmth seep through his shirt. He didn't hear Eli's voice, here. That was objectively a good thing, but it still felt like a punch to the gut, like something was missing.
It was as if his healing was a betrayal.
He swallowed.
"Since leaving Hogwarts, this has been — the only place I have privacy," Cash said quietly, "It feels like losing something." Different versions of himself. His stuff scattered around, forgotten. The versions of himself that were honest, and now they had nowhere to go.
Theo had been careful to give him space – but Cash had come to him, so. Exhaling, he tucked an arm around his waist.
“Yeah. It must have been nice,” Theo acknowledged. A safe place, somewhere to be honestly yourself. Theo had gotten a ghost of a glimpse of it now through Cash’s recollections, and once or twice for himself when Theo had visited Angie and actually been able to relax for a moment, as if this was some secret hideaway that no one would find. He had felt the same way after hours at the Chudley stadium, back when Cash had still played quidditch and for a dreamlike stretch things had been good, when – in kissing him, or even just talking – Theo had found that sudden, unexpected liberty of being entirely himself.
Of course, it wasn’t the same there now that Cash had quit; and he supposed it had never been entirely safe there to begin with. But Angie’s new place would be for her and her brother now, not hers alone; Theo rarely had any privacy at home; and Cash’s house was no better as long as it was also home to his wife and his son. And Cash would never be here again.
“But you’ll remember,” Theo tried. The past and his past selves would stay in him, in his head and in his chest. “You’ll find somewhere new to be. We – can find somewhere,” he amended, quiet, tentative, hopeful. He knew it would never be the same – it would never be enough – but he didn’t know how else to soften the blow. “And I know you. You still have me.”
Cash leaned against Theo, on the bare mattress, and closed his eyes. He had Theo, but he was never sure how much he really had Theo. It was not in the legal way that he had Adrienne, but their bond was also more real, based off of a well of emotions and feelings and real attraction. But they had no real obligation to each other, and it was only that emotional attachment that kept Theo coming back.
He could lose him, someday.
"We'll find somewhere," he said back. Maybe he could rent somewhere, or buy a flat, or something. It wouldn't be in a very good area, but he certainly had the funds. He'd have to think about it.
Theo’s eyebrows lifted lightly at Cash’s agreement there, hopeful but not yet convinced, because although he had been trying to reassure him, he didn’t know how exactly they would manage it, practically. Good excuses to see each other were few and far between, beyond in public – and to see each other properly, alone, the way Theo wanted to spend time with him, felt near impossible, not when there were countless other people to answer to in their lives.
But Christ, he wanted to. He hardly knew if they were together nowadays or not – Theo had dropped all his resolutions against it at the end of last year, when he had seen Cash so low – but it still felt different to the last time they had been together, given so much had changed in the interim; with how much more he knew, and with Cash being married and a father now.
So Cash’s body weight or the soft vibration of his I love you were warming, both. “I know you do,” he teased, grinning sidelong, even if light-heartedness felt almost irreverent in this room – even if he had needed desperately to hear it just now – even if Theo could have said it back to him a hundred times today, if only it could’ve made any difference. He slid his other arm around Cash as well, making it a casual embrace. “But I don’t mind you saying it.”
